


Catster's Tail

by ModernWizard



Series: Alison Wonderland [15]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: Ace Master, Asexual Character, Asexual Doctor, Asexual Master, Asexual Relationship, Bad Puns, Canon Character of Color, Consensual Kink, Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, F/F, Female Character of Color, Gen, Good puns, Head-Butting, In fact he's so much a cat that they call him Catster, Kink Negotiation, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Doctor (Doctor Who), Puns & Word Play, Puns That Are So Bad That They're Good, Purring, Snuggling, Snurgling, The Master is a cat, The Master is literally a cat, The Master is the Doctor's pet, ace doctor, nonsexual kink, petting, the Dork fam being dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 17:18:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17564717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: The Master [that's "the Magister" to Alison] is literally a cat. That's not the problem, though, since that's how he and the Doctor play on occasion. Unfortunately, Catster, as they call him in this form, seems to be missing something. But what? Suffering the plaints of the universe's most melodramatic feline, Alison, Bill, and the Doctor try to calm him down [and shut him up].





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An urgent text from Bill summons Alison from her home in Burlington, Vermont over to London, where the Doctor has turned the Magister into their pet cat. Bill says that something's wrong with Catster, however. He won't stop yowling about what he has lost.

_ Alisonshine!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Doctor’s in their lab but something’s wrong with Catster?!?!!??!!!!!?!?! Can you come????????? _

Skimming the text from her inevitable fiancée Bill, Alison pockets her TARDIS Talk cell phone. She clicks off her tablet and sets it on the side table next to her. Her latest draft of a translation paragraph for the Magister’s Latin II class needs a rest anyway.

Alison’s tablet obscures a decoration carved into the glossy tabletop: Death Victorious, a skeleton in laurels, holding a scythe. Alison snorts and rolls her eyes. The Magister, who’s her other partner besides Bill, adores the iconography of death. That explains why the living room looks like your average 1970s parlor, only crammed with Gothy details.

Alison pops up from her moss-yellow seat, rising onto her toes. She brushes past the fireplace. Powdered myrrh, the Biblical incense of funerals and purification, breathes out a pitchy odor from a shallow brass dish on the mantelpiece. The smell curls around her as she passes between furniture with roses and skulls on their decorative doilies. Myrrh makes her think of Christmas trees, only with more perfume; she likes it.

She reaches the other side of the living room. A four-paneled closet door of golden wood stands before her. A tombstone-shaped tablet on the door bears a classic verse from old New England graves:

_ Stop, my friend, as you pass by. _

_ As you are now, so once was I. _

_ As I am now, so shall you be. _

_ Therefore step in and follow me. _

In its original form, the verse reminds all mortals of impending death. The Magister’s macabre sense of humor, though, makes it an invitation to another realm. And that’s exactly what this closet is: an interdimensional portal that allows Alison to travel across the pond in an instant.

Alison opens the closet door and shoulders past a rack of the Magister’s capes. Or maybe they’re hers. He favors the melodrama of classic villain wear, while she likes looking like she walked out of a fairy tale. She always borrows his clothes, and he sighs, but permits her. The ownership goes both ways, just as it does in their relationship.

She slips through the portal that connects her and the Magister’s home in Burlington, Vermont with Bill and the Doctor’s home in London. The Dork family — that is, Alison, Bill, the Doctor, and the Magister — thrives on this alien tech. The Doctor and the Magister, inevitable spouses with a contentious history, live in their own ships in freedom and peace. Alison and Bill, the Doctor’s partner, cohabit with their respective Time  ~~ Lords ~~ Dorks. But Alison and Bill are also inevitable spouses — or they will be whenever they have enough time to marry — so they use the connecting portal frequently.

Alison steps out in a hall right by the door to the Doctor’s library. The door, shaped like a closed book and embossed  _ Wonders Within _ on its leather binding, barely silences the Magister’s yowl. He sounds like someone just separated him from his owner, threw him out into the rain,  _ and _ stepped on his tail. Alison cringes.

Like Alison and Bill, the Magister and the Doctor are pretty kinky. Unlike Alison and Bill, however, the Magister and the Doctor’s games have an interesting twist. The Magister is a robot who permits his creator, the Doctor, to control him remotely on occasion. One of their games involves the cat-o-matic function on the Magister’s controller. When the Doctor flicks this switch, the Magister then goes through a mental transformation, if not a physical one. The cat-o-matic reactivates a dormant virus that the Magister has in his system, one that almost turned him into a bipedal cat person. He becomes a very large, very fast, very smart, and very demanding domestic cat.

He’s also a very loud cat. The game of cattitude provides Alison’s robot with a convenient excuse to tell everyone, constantly and in copious detail, about his feelings. She’s all for discussing your emotions, but for fuck’s sake! Does he have to do it at such high volume?

Alison plugs her ears, but the howls still penetrate. Just as Alison can understand exactly what the Magister’s cat Imp says in her meows, so she also knows the substance of the Magister’s complaintst: “[Alas, alas! Woe is cat. I am broken and bereft, injured and ignominious, destitute and deprived.]”

“Oh, Alisonshine! Thank God you’re here!” Bill zips around the corner in her chrome-covered spaceship of a power wheelchair. She has gold-burnished brown skin, like light made flesh. Her long, thick eyebrows, jutting nose, and full, strong chin are the kind of features Alison likes: expansive, expressive, and just as bold as Bill’s personality. Bill flicks a button on her joybox and welcomes Alison with a brass fanfare. “Don’t know what’s gotten into Catster, but  — “

“Wait…  _ Catster?” _ Alison repeats, flicking her eyebrows up.

“Well, he’s not exactly the Prof when he’s in cat-o-matic mode, yeah?” That’s what Bill calls him, as  _ Magister _ is the intimate name/title that only Alison has leave to use. “And we both know his real name is...well…somewhat problematic.” Bill lowers her voice, but she won’t say it. Neither will Alison, because the Magister’s self-given name is  _ the Master. _

“No kidding. There’s a reason I call him  _ Magister,”  _ says Alison. In return, the Magister refers to her as his  _ Domina, _ often lengthened into  _ mea Domina carissima atque obsequentissima, _ my dearest and most obedient Domina.

“But I looked up both  _ magister _ and  _ domina, _ and they both mean — you know —  _ master. _ So...not really getting around it then, huh?”

“No, because we’re masters of our fate and also of some really kinky shit. The labels aren’t supposed to get around it. They acknowledge it.”

“Ah okay, so you’re masters of yourselves, not other people.” Bill nods once with comprehension and approval.

“So...back to Catster — you think he needs his master?” Alison indicates the library door with her thumb. Behind it, Catster continues to wail. “Is that what this is about?”

Bill shakes her head. “No, it’s not that he misses the Doctor, ‘cause he was making that noise when they were still playing with him, before they went into their lab.”

“He’s been like that all day, and you haven’t resorted to ear plugs?”

“Not all day. At first, he was ambushing the Doctor and making them shriek, bouncing off the walls after the laser pointer, wrestling with all the TARDIS cats…”

“So...the usual.” Alison chuckles. Much more rambunctious than the Magister, Catster gets his paws into everything. He likes to scoop Alison into his arms, carry her away from her current task, and retreat with her into his study. Then he snuggles her all over, tucks her into his lap, and falls asleep while carefully stroking her wiry dark brown hair. Of course, he always rearranges her hair, which she maintains in a spherical aureole, but Alison doesn’t mind. The Doctor’s  _ Best Kitty _ [their name for Catster] obviously has a pet Alison. And Alison’s okay with that.

“Then, all of a sudden, he started  _ caterwauling —  _ by which I mean he was a cat and he was driving me up the wall,” Bill says, always with the wordplay. “I couldn’t stand it, so I went out for a while, but, when I came back, he was still screeching!” She crinkles her nose and shakes her head, her short thick twists of brown hair springing loose.

Alison covers her ear nearest the door as Catster sustains a high note. “Why isn’t the Doctor here? The whole point of their games is consensual pain, objectification, and humiliation, not callous neglect.”

“Oh, they’re here. They’ve been trying to cheer him up. When I came back, they were singing the entire musical  _ Cats _ to him.”

“I can’t imagine that worked.”

“It was a  _ cat _ astrophe,” says Bill, trying hard to keep her eyebrows still. “Then,” she resumes her story, “just before I texted you, the Doctor ran into their robotics lab with an idea. So they’re in there, and we’re stuck out here with the world’s whiniest cat. Mmmph.” Bill flattens her hair on the top of her head, exasperated. “Why can’t he take a  _ cat _ nap — or go  _ cat _ atonic, just for a minute?”

“[My suffering is unimaginable,]” Catster proclaims, his voice piercing through the library door, “[for it is longer than the extent of time and deeper than the depths of space.]”

“Master of Hyperbole,” Alison mutters. “Look, Bill of my heart — Catster’s a consummate drama monarch, classically trained in the Scenery Chewing Method. Despite what he says, I can absolutely assure you that he’s not suffering some kind of  _ cat _ aclysm.”

“No, Alisonshine,” Bill contradicts her with a wrinkle between her brows. “Think something’s really wrong. The Doctor tried all the usual things — laser pointer, scritchy brush, belly rubs, pouncing, hide and seek, some electronic toys that they had invented — but nothing worked. Went in to see if maybe I could figure anything out, but he was just lying there, sighing and moaning.”

“And what was he saying?” Alison asks, hoping for a translation, but Bill only shrugs.

Alison, who always thought that everyone knew what cats were saying, suddenly learns that not all people share her ability. Bill, for example, does not know Domestic Cat at all, so she snickers when Alison tells her that Catster’s lament includes  _ Alas _ and  _ Woe is cat. _ Immediately after snickering, however, Bill insists that they must talk to Catster. They’ll ask him what’s wrong; Alison can interpret, and they can make him happy before the Doctor reappears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison and Bill enter the library and ask Catster what's wrong, but he can't tell them. The Doctor arrives with a Cat-to-English translator, but that doesn't help either. Alison observes that Catster's arse looks fine and then proposes a simple, obvious solution.

Alison swings the book door inward, pressing her palm against it. She holds it open for Bill, who guides her chair through with a casual flick of her wrist. Bill didn’t always use a wheelchair. But, ever since she was partly robotified with Cyber parts, the union between her biological anatomy and her Cyber core has given her chronic pain. Her wheelchair allows her freedom of movement without too much of a compromise for her stamina.

Anyway, the Doctor invented this wheelchair for Bill a year and a half ago when the Dork fam first met her. She hasn’t been using it that long, but she’s at home in it. She sits among its metallic fuselages and grilles with a straight, supple posture. A bend of eagerness in her spine always tilts her toward the next amazing experience. With one hand over the controls of her joybox, Bill looks like a pilot, intent on discovery. You know someone’s hot, Alison thinks, when even the way they drive their chair turns you on!

Alison and Bill progress into the library. The Doctor’s book room divides into a night side and a day side. A vaulted rotunda arches above it all like a black granite firmament. The night side, through which they now venture, contains all the heavy, hedge-like bookcases. A carpet of star-pricked blue unrolls beneath Alison’s feet and Bill’s tires. They move between pansy-like lamps of living flowers that dispel a thick, heady scent.

They cross the library’s equator, where the darkened carpet brightens to a dawn yellow. The day half of the library is all glass, even the roof dome, and today’s late afternoon sun falls through. The reading tables and chairs are slim and airy compared to the heavy night furniture. They even retain warmth from the sun. Living lights unfurl from the floor on this side too: deciduous trees with brightness in every bud.

Alison and Bill approach the warm wall of windows. Catster springs from his favorite chair of red leather cushions. As his usual self, the Magister propels himself through the world with a swift and geometrical exactitude befitting his station as the self-proclaimed Master of Dignity. As Catster, he abandons such pretenses, vibrating with excitement. All the wrinkles on his sepia-golden face ripple outward as he smiles. “[Domina, Domina, Domina  _ carissima!]” _ He trills upon seeing her. The blazes of white hair at his temples and the corners of his blackish goatee stand out like lightning bolts. Amber sparkles appear in his deep brown eyes, lighting up his entire sharp and cavernous face. “[My lovely, brilliant, clever, and most obedient Domina! You can fix me, can’t you?]”

Catster bounds over a table, knocking Alison backward. He catches her before she cracks her skull on the floor, but still gently sets her supine against the carpet. Then he pounces, pins her down, and snurgles — that is, snuggles and purrs — her assiduously. Alison squeaks and flails, laughing. Catster, thinking that she’s playing, pins her harder and snurgles more intensively.

“Oh — oh — oh!” Bill cries. Alison, her face full of ecstatic Catster, can barely hear her over the purr ringing in her skull. “The ears! Look at the ears! The pointy — fuzzy — swivelly ears!”

Catster finally calms down enough to withdraw slightly, though he won’t let Alison up. Bill’s right. Catster has big triangular ears on top of his head, covered in almost black fur the color of his hair. They point at Alison like adoring radar receivers. Speaking of radar, the long white whiskers in his eyebrows, cheeks, and beard also reach toward Alison, making a dish of his face as well. “And the whiskers!” Alison says in between winded pants. “Eyebrow whiskers!”

Bill gazes down at Alison, seeming topsy-turvy to Alison’s view. She narrows her pale brown eyes. “Is he squishing you? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he does this all the time. Actually, if you look at his stance, he’s kneeling over me, not  _ on _ me. He’s supporting his own weight, so I’m not really squished at all. Besides, I don’t mind this position.”

“You get off like that when  _ I’m _ squishing you.” Bill’s eyebrows levitate.

“Shhhhh!”

“Anyway,” says Bill, “you didn’t know that he had ears and whiskers?” Alison says that she thought cattitude was just an attitude, without physical transformation. Bill tells her that the Doctor recently integrated ears and whiskers into the Magister’s usual anatomy. Now, when the Doctor activates the cat-o-matic, the Magister’s ears change shape and migrate up further on his head. And the whiskers, which are retractable, come out.

Alison squeals again. “Now he looks exactly like he does when he goes into my head.” Alison and the Magister regularly tour each other’s minds and converse with each other’s selves. When he shows up in Alison’s mind library, the Magister assumes a form based on her mental concept of him. “He’s himself — the Magister — but he looks like this. You should have seen him when he showed up in my head with cat parts for the first time. He was practically wagging his tail.”

“Oh my God, a tail? Oh — oh — oh — wish I could have seen! Kinda strange that the Doctor didn’t give him one in the real world.”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s tricky business to extend someone’s spinal column. I don’t know. Anyway, let’s see what we can find out. —Hey, Catster.” Turning her attention to him, Alison scritches behind his ears. “You sounded so sad earlier. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Catster’s whiskers droop, along with his entire face. “[Oh, dearest Domina, pity me, for indeed I am the saddest, most wretched, and most miserable of all feline creatures in the multiverse. An abyss gapes within me. I am broken, and part of me is gone. Restore me to wholeness — I beg of you!]”

Alison translates this for Bill, who wrinkles her nose thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s hungry?”

Alison asks him. “[I yearn for wholeness,]” Catster replies. He finally releases Alison, heaving himself off her with a dejected flop. “[I had it for one brief glorious instant,]” he continues, lying in a heap on the floor, “and then it was gone. Alas, alas... Alas, alas!]” His cries heighten, a cross between human grief and cat distress. The eldritch sounds stiffen the hairs on Alison’s nape.

Alison and Bill make no progress with their questions. Catster just elongates himself over the arms of his favorite throne-like chair, insisting that his tragedy is indescribable. Eventually Bill says to Alison, “You have the master Master controller, yeah? Do a hard reset; turn him back to the Prof, and ask him what’s wrong.”

“I could, but I don’t feel right doing it without the Doctor’s permission. This is their game, and — “

“Ah hah! I have it!” The Doctor enters the library at that moment, throwing open the book door so hard that its knob hits the wall. They run across the galactic carpet, leather apron flapping around their rangy frame. A purple pansy lamp clips them on the temple, knocking welding goggles from their balding forehead. They recover themself and hurtle onward.

The Doctor advances into the light half of the library. They crash into a golden blond table, fumbling the electronic device under one arm. For a moment, their limbs fly in all different directions. Then they pull themself together, executing a forward flip across the tabletop. Taking a jumble of books with them, they land on their feet in front of Alison and Bill, as if they planned to do that all along. They tuck locks of grey hair behind their ears and brandish their device in Bill’s direction. “Look, my dear Bill — a solution to all our feline problems!”

“[Doctor, my dear Doctor!]” The Magister greets his inevitable spouse, but does not stir from where he lolls across his chair. “[You see before you a creature in the throes of bitterest psychic torment. Alas, alas! Woe is cat. Allow me to expatiate on the magnitude of my distress.]” He covers his eyes with his paw, curls up in a circle, and meows, albeit rather muffled.  

Bill checks out the Doctor’s device. “Looks like a microphone attached to a recorder,” she observes, gritting her teeth at the background noise. “Are you doing some digital analysis on his noises or something?” she asks the Doctor.

“No, actually, it’s real-time conversion! I’ve taken some inspiration from the ol’ girl’s localization feature,” the Doctor explains, referring to their TARDIS Anima. “This device will translate from Best Kitty’s, uh, unique idiolect of Domestic Cat into English. He speaks in here,” they say, waving the microphone, “and the translation comes out here.” They lift the square speaker. “Of course, the result will be crude, since I just invented this thing this morning. But we should have a general idea of what’s bothering him.”

“So give it a go,” says Alison, jumping on tiptoes. “I’m this close to finding him a ball gag.”

“Oh hello there, Alison!” The Doctor waves with their microphone-holding hand, as if Alison hasn’t been there all along. “How good of you to join us. Hmmmm...I wonder where I put my own ball gag…. Ah well, it’s bound to appear soon enough. Get it?” They boink their winged eyebrows.  _ “Bound _ to appear?”

Bill giggles. “It’s probably just a little tied up at the moment, if you know what I mean.”

Alison, shaking her head, smiles. She understands the Doctor’s inveterate punning, since she herself always appreciates a word-based witticism. She’s less certain about the Doctor’s overexplaining and recycling of jokes. In her mind, things become boring with excessive repetition. But the Doctor’s having fun, as is Bill, and she can’t resist their goofy grins. “Can we go back to this translator, though, please?”

The Doctor squats by Catster, petting him from forehead to back of neck. Their long, strong strokes remind Alison of how the Magister pets her.  “Why are you crying, Best Kitty?”

Catster responds with a litany of unendurable agonies. When he ends, the square speaker produces the Magister’s voice, though definitely not in his idiom: “There’s an extra hole in my arse, and I fuckin’ hate it!”

Alison and Bill guffaw helplessly. The Doctor joins in, and they all crack up for a minute or so. “Okay!” says Bill. “That was definitely crude, all right. Get it, Doctor —  _ crude?” _

The Doctor gasps. “A proleptic pun! I made a proleptic pun.” They clap and spin on one foot, gazing at the vaulted library ceiling. “Oh, my Master will be so proud of me when I tell him.”

“I don’t think your translator helped, Doctor. The Magister’s arse looks fine to me,” says Alison.

“Oh,” says Bill, winking, “we know.” Her smirk brackets show at the corners of her mouth.

Alison swats her lightly. “Oh, shut it.” Everyone in the Dork fam knows that she has some lust for the Magister, and they’re all fine with it. Even the Magister doesn’t seem perturbed, though he himself is ace and his relationship with Alison kinky, but without  _ erotic activities _ [his term]. Only Alison has a problem with it. Time for another strategic change of subject: “Why don’t I just turn him back and ask him what’s wrong?” Alison holds up the master Master controller.

“Oh. Oh yeah.” The Doctor scratches their head, blinks several times, then nods. “That would be much easier...and more reliable. Yeah, go ahead and do that.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison quiets Catster at long last. The Magister turns from Catster back into himself and explains exactly why he was complaining. There is a lot of snurgling.

Alison waits until Catster finishes a sentence. Then she points the controller at him and keys in the reset and power down sequence. Over the course of ten seconds or so, he twitches, settles, then stills.

Silence floats about the library. “Awwww yeah,” Bill says. “Maybe now my ears’ll stop ringing.”

Alison inhales in relief, then exhales. The bright and fine-grained smell of the ever-budding tree lights rises to her nostrils. She pushes the buttons to start up her robot again, this time as his usual self. While she’s waiting, she deepens her breath. Craning her head back for a better noseful of scent, she closes her eyes.

“Thank you,  _ mea Domina carissima atque obsequentissima!” _ Alison has no time to react before the Magister boings from his seat. He sweeps Alison into his arms and rams his entire face into the crease between her jaw and her neck. Snurgling ensues.

“Eeeek!” Alison struggles without effect. “You’re pokier than usual!” She finally wriggles away far enough to see that he’s still partly cat-shaped. “Oh, your whiskers didn’t retract; that’s why.”

“Neither did the ears. Oh my God, the fuzzy little ears…” Bill, her hands in her hair again, groans, unable to resist the cuteness.

“What of them?” The Magister glances at Bill. His fuckin’ ridiculous eyebrows, enhanced with white whiskers, rise. “You possess two ears of your own, don’t you, Heliantha?” That’s what he calls Bill, Latin for  _ sunflower.  _ “—Although,” he adds with a smirk, “they’re not nearly as articulated, so I understand your envy.”

“Hey, Master,” says the Doctor. The Magister swings about to them, Alison still held fast to his chest. “What exactly was missing that you didn’t have the words for?”

“Ah.” The Magister’s features fall to rest again. He says with great emphasis,  _ “My tail.” _

“You have a tail?” Bill, nudging her chair forward, bends sideways over her arm rest and checks his rear end. “Pretty sure you don’t have a tail,” she informs him.

“Well, I did this morning, at least for a few hours, but — “

“That’s it!” The Doctor snaps their fingers, launches their arms over their head, and waves their hands. They whack a branch on one of the trees of light. The buds knock together with small clicks. “The magnetic connection between your tail and your butt wasn’t strong enough. It must have fallen out when you were jumping on me this morning. I mean — your tail must have fallen out, not your butt.”

“That’s why you were okay at least for part of the time,” Bill says to the Magister, nodding. “Your tail was attached. But then the  _ cat _ astrophe struck, and it fell off your arse.”

“But why couldn’t you just tell me that? You went on and on about the lacuna at the center of your soul instead,” Alison says.

The Magister sighs. He deposits Alison in his nailed leather throne and addresses the three other Dorks like a lecturing professor. “As you have no doubt gathered, my mind and my perceptions work differently in cattitude.” He emphasizes his topic sentence with two pointer fingers [and both ears] seriously upright. “I may be quite precise, philosophical, and pedantic in my usual state, but cattitude challenges all those capacities.

“I could not speak to you about my lost tail because a tail has not been part of my cattitude until today. I compare myself to the TARDIS cats, as they are my feline peers. Some possess tails, but some do not. Thus I as a cat do not understand a tail as a necessary condition for cattitude. I as a cat have no personal frame of reference for it and thus no language to discuss it. So you will now understand why I found my tail a pleasing addition and an upsetting loss, but one that I could not articulate the nature of.” He concludes his speech with a nod.

Alison chews on her lower lip. “Huh. When you put it that way...well, that explains everything.”

“Naturally. I am the Master of Clarification, after all.” The Magister addresses the Doctor: “So, now that I have elaborated upon my desires quite explicitly, I charge you to secure the magnetic connection between my tail and the base of my spine. Then this distressing event will never again come to pass.” He glides nonchalantly across the light side of the library, between the heavy bookcases on the dark side, and out of the room.

“Did my — “ The Doctor, smothering laughter, addresses Alison and Bill. “Did my pet cat just tell me what to do?”

“Shocking, I know,” says Alison.

Bill puffs herself up, sits very straight in her chair, and quotes the Magister’s favorite spell: “I am Catster, and you will obey me. Otherwise I’m going to drag myself around the house, testing my emergency broadcasting equipment at maximum volume — for hours! Waaaaaah-eeeeeee-oooooh…”

The Doctor blanches. “Good point, my dear Bill. I forgot about the noise. Pardon me. I’m going to get right on improving that connection.” Blundering over tables and chairs, they vanish in the direction of their lab.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huzzah! The Magister has his tail once again. Everyone rejoices except for Imp, his pet cat, and the Veneficus, the Magister's decaying and mean-spirited self. MORE SNURGLING.

Two days later, Alison, at home in her doll studio, contemplates her doll of the Magister. Should she give him little ears and a tail? As much as she wants to, she’s not sure how to add them without ruining his paint job.

Imp soars in as a little black blur and alights on Alison’s workbench. She places herself directly between Alison and her doll. “[Pet me!]” She crawls up under Alison’s hand and rubs herself back and forth on it, fluttering her bat wings with pleasure. “[Have you seen Useless Cat? He’s prancing around, pretending to be a real cat, and it’s hilarious!]” she reports with a trill.

“Mocking me again?” The Magister arrives. Yes, he is indeed prancing, his tail high in a jaunty curl. His fuzzy ears bend forward. His eyebrow whiskers and all the other ones spread about his face, flickering upward as he smiles. “Just admit it.” He points at Imp. “You envy me my opposable thumbs.”

Imp’s yellow eyes narrow. She stares at him for a moment. “[You’ll never be as good as me, even with a tail!]” She flicks her own, flying away.

Alison sets down her miniature replica of the Magister and throws her arms around her actual robot. “You got your tail back! Eeeeeeeeeeee, it’s so cuuuuuuuuuute!”

The Magister hugs her, rattling with deep, satisfied purrs. His tail slides across her cheek as it, along with his arms, winds around her. Since he’s slightly shorter than her, Alison bends a bit, pressing her cheek against his chest. This way, she listens to his double heart noise makers, and he reaches the top of her head. The Magister and Bill are the only two in the multiverse privileged to touch her hair. Now he wraps the flat of his hand sideways around the top of her skull, pushing her hair backward. She feels as though he’s settling a crown on her head, officially dubbing her his Domina. With a happy sigh, Alison leans against him and lets his purrs go into her.

“Well, at least someone appreciates me, even if it’s not my ingrate of a cat,” the Magister remarks. “It’s very vexing! I give her life; I feed her and shelter her; I raise her and care for her, and I receive but insults and objurgation in return.”

“You know — you joke, but I bet she feels threatened. She just can’t admit it because she’s got her pride.” Alison, pulling away, looks down into his face.

“Oh, I know,” he says, bringing up his chin so that he can meet her eyes. “And I will render fit tribute to the Imperatrix eventually, but not before you render me appropriate tribute on my improved appearance.”

“Okay, Catster. Whatever.”

His tail describes an excited interrobang. “Did you just call me by my — ?”

_ “Catster, _ you goof!”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. Now — your tribute?”

“You are a complete, total, and utter doofus,” says Alison, hugging him again. “How’s that for tribute? Hey — do you know that you look now exactly like you do in my head?”

“Indeed, that was my inspiration.” The Magister’s eyebrows, as thick and impressive as Bill’s, bounce for glee.

“Awww, I’m flattered. Hey, wait a minute. So when you’re in your own head these days, do you look like you do right now?” asks Alison.

When the Magister assures Alison that he does, she realizes something significant. Her mental conception of him has altered his mental conception of himself. She has changed him on the profoundest level. How does he feel about that? How does he feel about her?

Alison, her heart giving a knock, swerves from that thought abruptly: “So what do all your other selves think of your snuggly new shape?”

“Hmmm…” The Magister, tracing the perimeter of his arrow-shaped goatee, reviews. The Little Witch, who’s him when he was a girl, thought it was hilarious. Keller approved, since he obviously carried off the cat ears with style. Tremas, who nearly became a cat against his will, avoided the Magister until the others convinced him that the Magister would not fully shapeshift. The Cat, the feline creature that Tremas almost turned into, advised the Magister to transmogrify all the way. Bruce, who had snake eyes and other reptilian traits before he possessed a human, considered serpentine attributes superior to feline ones. Septimus, the ghost-like one who saved the Doctor and ended the Time War, said that the Magister’s new form embodied his increased compassion. Only the Veneficus, would-be assassin of the Doctor, disliked the Magister’s new look. He muttered that the Magister was a traitor and shut himself in his chambers.

Alison coughs with contempt. “Okay, clearly we need to watch him closely, but still — he really needs to get over himself. Being a cat — “

“—Is where it’s at,” the Magister finishes, head-butting his pet Alison until she squees.


End file.
